thought too hard about MRI machines today and had this come to me in a vision
mri accident is literally one of my biggest anxiety freakouts. i dont care about being in the tiny loud tube, im so scared of a secret piece of metal i dont know about in my body will tear through me like a knife through butter. what if i ate a quarter in my sleep
who else up thinking about outbreaks by kitchen mckeown
AND SHE WITH HER MANY MOUTHS SAYS NOTHING!!!
- Ollie Schminkey, My Father.
ID: a poem that can be read three ways, the left side is labeled Alive, the right side is labeled Dead. Reading only Alive gives:
He walks through the trees, the sun sifting through his beard. Here I am, just a kid, a father with his favourite child. He looks so much like a dad. Here we are: birds flying; a pulsing river; a ravenous picnic; and that smile, a mouth wide open, his child, newly awakened, wrapped around his neck like rosary beads clinging to his body. I loved him long before I heard of his body failing, and I held him so. Trusting that my love is enough.
Reading only Dead gives:
My dreams every night turn to spiders that all have his face. There is a campfire burning out, and me, the white dust of only ash in my hands. In the real world, standing next to his bed again– he doesn’t look like a body about to burn to pieces. Dead silence– no voice, only an echo not quite gone yet. The pills are down his throath, the morphine into his stomach, his body only for the disease, the wound across his back becomes filled with blood, and me, standing next to the body. Grief has hands twisted, tightening in prayer: the last breath like a final amen. I could speak the prayer a thousand ways– still, God will answer for only God, never for the living.
And reading them both together gives:
He walks through my dreams every night. The trees turn to spiders that all have his face. There the sun is a campfire burning out, and me, sifting through the white dust of his beard, only ash in my hands. Here in the real world I am standing next to his bed, just a kid again– he doesn’t look like a father with a body about to burn his favourite child to pieces. He looks dead. So much silence– no voice, only an echo, like a dad not quite gone yet. Here we are: the pills are birds flying down his throat; the morphine a pulsing river into his stomach; his body a ravenous picnic only for the disease; and that smile, the wound across his back becomes a mouth wide open, filled with blood; and me, his child, standing next to the body. Newly awakened grief has hands wrapped around his neck, twisted like rosary beads tightening in prayer: clinging to the last breath, his body like a final amen. I loved him long before I could speak. I learned the prayer of his body failing a thousand ways– and I held him, so still, trusting that God will answer for my love. Only, God is never enough for the living.
End ID
Franny Choi, Soft Science
[ID: A poem in the form of a table. The title, written at the top, is "Glossary of Terms". The table has 4 columns and 5 rows. The columns are "star", "ghost", "mouth", and "sea". The rows are "meaning", "see also", "antonym", "origin", and "dreams of being".
Meaning: Star: bright, ancient wound I follow home. Ghost: the outline of silence. Mouth: an entryway or an exit. Sea: cold ancestor; bloodless womb
See also: Star: spark; stranger; scripture; sting. Ghost: shadow; photograph; hum. Mouth: fish; slug; fist; slop; any synonym of please. Sea: heart-song; swarm-song; salt-song; swallower of songs
Antonym: Star: fish. Ghost: blood. Mouth: mouth. Sea: machine
Origin: Star: myth; a mother's stories; matter's static. Ghost: all things birth their own opposites. Mouth: what came first, the sword or the wound? Sea: N/A
Dreams of being: Star: reached. Ghost: filled, or flesh. Mouth: the sea. Sea: N/A (does not dream; is only dreamed of). End ID.]
"When people talk about gender-affirming surgery using words like “mutilation,” that's not very nice. Is that how you think about people who've had surgery for other things? It's a disgust reaction, and I do not take disgust into account as a legitimate point of discourse. I don't have to entertain it and I'm not going to. It's a waste of everybody's time, it's knee-jerk, it's not grounded in reality, and it's not useful. And it's a squeamishness about medical intervention. I think the idea of making legislative or cultural decisions in and around [that] is laughable. Your squeamishness is not what the world turns on; it doesn't matter."
Liv Hewson in Teen Vogue (italics added by me for emphasis)
Greg Egan – Anatomy of a Hatchet Job:
A few reviewers complained that they had trouble keeping straight the physical meanings of the Splinterites’ directions. This leaves me wondering if they’ve really never encountered a book before that benefits from being read with a pad of paper and a pen beside it, or whether they’re just so hung up on the idea that only non-fiction should be accompanied by note-taking and diagram-scribbling that it never even occurred to them to do this. I realise that some people do much of their reading with one hand on a strap in a crowded bus or train carriage, but books simply don’t come with a guarantee that they can be properly enjoyed under such conditions.
maybe egan realized this is stupid because all of his subsequent physics-y books have online supplements written in textbook style, instead of the math being delivered in dialogue which, like, is just not a good way to read it.
As a result you get this "two-part" reading experience, with each part being suited to different contexts. I can read the online physics supplement at a cafe with a notebook open and a cup of coffee, and the story in bed. The only one I can claim to have fully understood is "Scale". In bed, it's a detective story, with the quirk that the woman who hires the private detective is about 8 times larger than him, and the suspects are about 8 times smaller than the detective. And the smaller people also think and age proportionally faster. At a cafe, it's a textbook-style exposition of the strange consequences of heavy leptons, and what it shows about the role of spatial scale and time in quantum mechanics.
I like it a lot, but it is, unfortunately, almost unique. Like other stuff has both technical and narrative components, but not so clearly separated in medium and style.
I can't think of one other example though, one of my favorite books ever: "To Explain the World", Stephen Weinberg's book on the history of physics from ancient Greece to Newton. It has a "technical appendix" with modernized versions of historical physics derivations. So, in bed, I read about how despite the sun and moon appearing the same size in the sky, there was one ancient Greek, Aristarchus, who figured out that the sun was much larger and farther away, and even proposed heliocentrism to place this extremely large body in the center. At a café, I can learn his argument.
This is astonishing because I think it's what I want from every book in some sense. I think when I read these wizard books there's some childish part of me that thinks I'm receiving incredibly important news, that people are capable of these spells, because maybe I will have an opportunity to learn the trick myself. With Weinberg's book, I actually do! Can't make history with it anymore but I can make the argument. Call it a divination spell, paying careful attention to the position of the moon and learning something from it. Really it's just solar-system scale surveying.
So it's wonderful and frustrating, because like I said, I really know of no other book like this. I mean there's Pais's history books, but like I said, that's not a two-part reading experience. It's annoying to try to follow the story while skipping the equations, and then go back to the equations later. I simulate it to some degree by reading pop science books and then separately reading the papers they mention, but it's hard--Weinberg is also modernizing the arguments. I would love to find something like a translation of Einstein's 1905 papers, with commentary including rephrasing in modern notation.
imagine if doorways grew back like scabbed over with fresh drywall and you had to keep carving them back out with a jabsaw to keep the doorway clear etc
Imagine if the membranes recoiled in pain every time you did this. Imagine if over time, some doorways became accustomed sensation. Imagine that very rarely, some even seemed to enjoy it.
*sleepover host voice* imagine if you two went to sleep
Oh for gods sake kids it’s like piercing an ear - that’s why you put a doorframe in - you don’t hang a door in drywall, you gremlins. You frame the door. It’s like those gauges that people put in their ears - the hole stays. It won’t scab over with a doorframe in it. You’ve lived around doors you whole life, you little clowns. Lights out
i said 'explain physics to me like youre in love with me' and after a while of quiet he went 'everything sings'. so i get it now
my hot take on the awful nuclear war movie discourse is that i do actually think there is a way to create a critical but sympathetic biopic abt the jewish leftist/communist scientists involved in the manhatten project, who at the moment of 1942 did earnestly (and had reason to) view themselves as part of an urgent struggle against global nazism, and which can cut thru the usamerican imperialist apologia hero-fetish impulse and lay bare the genocidal devastations left in the wake of continuing us counterinsurgent militarism across the continent and pacific (which means addressing the anticommunism!) w/o resorting to white man existentialist handwringing. such a film however, would not be politically commensurable as a bajillion dollar summer blockbuster directed by christopher nolan!
it would require such film to face why so many american atom bomb researchers ended up as soviet spies when they realized this bomb is meant to be eventually used against ussr.
“It was due to this misconception, to this separation of science from society, of science from human beings and human lives that I came to work on the atomic bomb during the war. I believed, as did many of my colleagues, that our job as scientists went only so far as to find out the truths of nature. Anything beyond this, anything to do with the application of the knowledge we scientists discovered, was of secondary concern to us. In our study of pure science, we had no time to concern ourselves with such trifles.The application of science must be left to statesmen and engineers.
And I am ashamed to admit it took the horror of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to shock me out of this ivory tower of complacency, to shock me into the fundamental realization that there is no such thing as “pure” science; that science has a meaning only in relation to its service to mankind; only in so far as it helps to create a rich and beautiful world.
I say to those scientists, both in Japan and the United States who even now are still engaged in research on atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs and bacteriological warfare: Think again what it is you are doing! You may believe that you are gaining scientific fame by the papers marked “secret” which you are now filing away in the safes of the U.S. Army, but this is utterly false and shameful fame is an illusion, which will soon be trampled to dust by the hatred of the peoples of the whole world.”
Joan Hinton (Chinese name Han Chun) addressing the Asia-Pacific Peace Conference in Beijing, October 1952. She worked at the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos and had witnessed the Trinity test. This marked her first public appearance since 1948 when she left her position at the Institute of Nuclear Studies at the University of Chicago to witness the revolutionary struggle in China. Hinton and her husband, Erwin Engst, subsequently dedicated their remaining lives to advancing Chinese agricultural collectivization and mechanization.
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feeling normal about this hanif abdurraqib poem
[Image ID:
THE AUTHOR WRITES THE FIRST DRAFT OF HIS WEDDING VOWS
(An erasure of Virginia Woolf's suicide letter to her husband, Leonard)
Dearest,
I feel certain I am going mad again.
we will go through terrible times. And recover. I begin to hear your voice, and can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems
will give me the greatest possible happiness.
I don't think two people could have been happier with this disease. I know
that without you I can't properly feel.
What I want to say is You have
saved me.
Everything has gone from me
but the certainty of your goodness.
/end ID]
Though it can seem daunting, a range of noted thinkers from Karl Marx to Ice T agree that in such scenarios it is necessary to hold your friend to account for their misdeeds. Both for their own sake and for society writ large.
Rhiannon McGavin, from “Parc Monceau, September,” in Grocery List Poems [ID in ALT]
kind of obsessed with this actually. like yes imago means image or likeness but it's also a ghost. it's the image of your ancestors that you display in your house and at your funerals. it's a depiction of all that came before you and it's also your own final state. i think biologists and classicists should make out about this
i unironically believe electricity is the closest thing we have to magic in this universe. consider:
